On Wednesday 17th February, the Creative Writing Programme at Edge Hill University presented Peter Hughes with James Byrne and myself as support.
Peter Hughes is a poet and founding editor of Oystercatcher Press. His Selected Poems came out from Shearsman in 2013, who also publish a critical volume on his varied work. His versions of the complete sonnets of Petrarch, Quite Frankly, were published by Reality Street in 2015 to great acclaim. See this website. Peter read exclusively from this volume on the 17th. Read my account of his and Tim Atkins' translations from Petrarch here and here. (My own Petrarch project, which I kept to myself in the presence of the Master, can be read about here and there in the first of those two links, and read about and partly read, here.)
James Byrne read from his new book Everything Broken Up Dances (including the extrarordinary title poem) and I read from my newish book History or Sleep: Selected Poems and my new Oystercatcher, The Drop. As at the three previous 'launches' I read no poem that I'd previously read. Their set lists are here for Liverpool, here for Sheffield and here for the London Shearsman launch.
Robert Sheppard (set list)
from History or Sleep
1. Returns 1
2. Coming Down from St. George's Hill 3
3. Empty Diaries: 1974, 1982, 1987, and 1990.
4. Prison Camp Violin, Riga
3. National Security 1940, Huyton (for Hugo Dachinger)
4. from Warrant Error: London
and from The Drop
Standing By (see here for text and context).
On 12th March I shall be reading the whole of The Drop at an Oystercatcher reading in Leicester. Info soon!
